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Aquatic Procedia 4 (2015) 1086 – 1093

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WATER RESOURCES, COASTAL AND OCEAN

ENGINEERING (ICWRCOE 2015)

Flushing Study for Artificial Island

Ahmed A. Lebleba*, Ehab R.Tolbaa , Elsayed M.Galala
a
Civil Enginnering Dept., Faculty of Engineering, Portsaid University, Portsaid, Egypt

Abstract

The increasing desire to live at coastal areas has a deep effect in large number of marine developments and man-made island all
over the world. Hence, the artificial island at East Port said, Egypt was the chosen research point as a future project. As the
artificial island will be designed for tourist purpose, the flushing study is very important part to ensure the water quality and
check the preliminary layout of the project to circulate and renewing the water body inside island with adequate time. This paper
describes how integration of engineering and environmental aspects into the planning with extensive use of numerical
hydrodynamics models by using MIKE21. This paper show the result for most important cases to judge the suitability of flushing
time and also it proved that wind has a deep effect to improve the results for the residence time which may reach more than 50%.
© 2015 The
© 2015 TheAuthors.
Authors.Published
Publishedbyby Elsevier
Elsevier B.V.
B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Peer-review under responsibility of organizing committee of ICWRCOE 2015.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of organizing committee of ICWRCOE 2015
Keywords: Artificial Island, Flushing, MIKE-21, Water Circulation, Tracer, Advection- Dispersion,Residence Time

1. Introduction

This project is one of the suggestions for the improvement of the Suez canal zone . The project is located north-
east of Port said, Egypt as shown in fig . 1. The location has a latitude (from 31◦04'26.88' 'to 31◦06'50.67'') and
longitude (from 32◦32'25.44'' to 32◦33'40.19'') .The island layout covers an area of approximately 12 km2 as an
semi-enclosed man mad island .

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +2-012-100-38-666;

E-mail address: a.lebleb@Yahoo.com; prof.tolba@gmail.com

2214-241X © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of organizing committee of ICWRCOE 2015
doi:10.1016/j.aqpro.2015.02.137
 Ahmed A. Lebleb et al. / Aquatic Procedia 4 (2015) 1086 – 1093 1087

Fig. 1. Project Location

In the most basic sense, flushing is the physical exchange of water mass between one water body and another,
perhaps larger water body, typically considered as the ambient, existing, or connecting water body. The combination
of nutrients, organisms, dissolved gases, and suspended material that comprise the aquatic environment are carried
via the fluid medium. The hydrodynamic processes that transport the water and its constituents are essential to the
understanding of the system CEM(2008) .
Flushing time (Tf) is a bulk or integrative parameter that describes the general exchange characteristics of a
waterbody without identifying the underlying physical processes, the relative importance of those processes, or their
spatial distribution. Geyer et al. (2000, p. 191) defined flushing as"the ratio of the mass of a scalar in a reservoir to
the rate of renewal of the scalar." Tf can be calculated as the volume of water in a defined (bounded) system (V)
divided by the volumetric flow rate (Q) through the system.

V
Tf (1)
Q

Q For conservative, miscible quantities associated with the water, flushing can be defined alternatively
(Fischer et al. 1979)as

M
Tf (2)
F

where M is mass of the scalar in the domain and F is fluxof the scalar through the domain. Application of this
definition requires estimates of both the system volume (or its contained mass) and the exchange rate through the
system (flow or mass flux).
Because the quantities V (or M) and Q (or F) often are not known, computation of Tf is sometimes based on the
assumption that a waterbody functions as a continuously stirred tank reactor (CSTR), so that flushing time can
beestimated from observations of outflow concentration over time. For example, Eshleman and Hemond (1988)
assumed a CSTR model to predict alkalinity in a reservoir and compared model results to measured alkalinity at the
outflow spillway.
The major assumption for the CSTR model is that any introduction of mass is instantaneously and evenly mixed
throughout the domain, so the concentration of a constituent exiting the system is equal to the concentration
everywhere inside the CSTR. If we assume that (1) a load of known mass is injected into a CSTR at (time) t=0,
resulting in an initial concentration Co, (2) no further mass is introduced after t = 0, and (3) flow and the volume of
the CSTR remain constant over time, the concentration inside the CSTR is (Thomann and Mueller 1987)

­° §¨ - QV t ·¸ ½° ­ §¨ - t ·¸ ½
° ¨T ¸°
c(t ) co ®e© ¹ ¾ co ®e© f ¹ ¾ (3)
°̄ °¿ °̄ °¿
1088 Ahmed A. Lebleb et al. / Aquatic Procedia 4 (2015) 1086 – 1093

2. Meteorological Conditions

Meteorological and hydrographic conditions for the area of the man - made island developments are presented in
the following available data for wave, wind, and tide were obtained during project investigation of a new harbor
close to our project which covered the period from May 1999 to May 2000.

2.1. Wind Effect

The directional wind statistics around the island was analyzed using data measured with 1 hour time step. The
frequencies of occurrence for different wind speeds in these sectors are shown in Fig. (2) in the form of wind rose.
The wind rose indicates that the prevailing wind direction is NW.

2.2. Water Level

The time series for the available measured data for tide which measured with time step1 hour, are shown in fig.3

Fig. 2. Wind Rose Fig. 3. Tide value along full year for east port said,Egypt

The time series of tide values indicated can be divided within three different range..
x Minimum Rate :
From 3September 1999 to 27 September1999 and from 17 February 2000 to 28 March 2000 with average value
0.32 m.
x Average Rate :
from 27April 1999 to14June1999,from 20Junuary 2000 to 18 February 2000,and from 2 April 2000 to 3 March
2000 with average value 0.6m
x Maximum Rate:
From 15June1999 to 2September 1999 and from 28 September 1999 to19 January 2000 with average value 0.76m
The case of minimum rate is consider the worst case for flushing modelling study.

The design water level mainly consists of an extreme tide plus meteorological effects and estimated global sea
level rise over the next century by IPCC’s fifth assessment synthesis report (2014). (CD corresponds to LAT sea
level):

Tidal level exceeded 0.01% of the time (2012 to 2112): +1.08m CD

Estimated meteorological effects: +0.6m
Estimated sea level rise (100 years): +0.5m
‫ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬
Design High Water Level (DHWL): +2.2m CD
 Ahmed A. Lebleb et al. / Aquatic Procedia 4 (2015) 1086 – 1093 1089

2.3. Wave Conditions.

During construction of a new harbor close to the project area , the wave data was obtained . The data is based on
measured data with 1 hour time step . Directional sectors were considered with their centers ranging from 0 o N to
330o N. The frequency of occurrence for different ranges of wave heights, in each of the analyzed sectors are
obtained and plotted in the form of wave rose, shown in Fig. 4. From the wave rose, the prevailing offshore wave
sector is that centered at NW.
MIKE 21 NSW (Near shore Wave Model) was used to simulate the wave transformation around the island . The
nearshore wave conditions the island coast were investigated using a numerical wave propagation model through
MIKE21 (NSW). MIKE 21 NSW is spectral wave model, which is capable of calculating the growth and decline of
wind waves in the neareshore region. The model include the effect of wave Shoaling, wave refraction, bottom
dissipation, wave blocking , wind generation , wave braking , frequency spreading , directional spreading , wave-
wave interaction ,and wave current interaction. The wave heights around the project are low, in the order of 0.1 to
0.9 m as Shown fig. 5 due to the depths limitation.

Fig. 4. Wave Rose Fig. 5. Wave Height

3. Model Description

The models used in the study are two dimensional numerical models based on advection dispersion equations.
These models include a hydrodynamic module (MIKE 21 - HD) and an advection dispersion module (MIKE 21 -
AD).Two scenarios have been carried out for three different cases that have been mentioned earlier to estimate the
flushing time . The first scenario is neglecting the wind effect over the island . The second scenario is considered as
a more realistic case with wind effect included in the model of island .. The model is used to simulate the
concentration of a material 'tracer material' assumed to fill the water area inside the island where the concentration
of the tracer material decreases the flushing time decreases.

4. Model Set up

The most important step to get the accurate correct result for any numerical model with its points as following:

4.1. Input geometry

The water exchange rate is affected by factors such as the plan form geometry, entrance dimensions and number of entrances
(Nece, 1984). So, once the geometrical effects and locally dominant flushing parameters are understood, a marina can be
designed to have an optimal water exchange rate. The bathymetric data considered the most import factor that affect on
the numerical model and reflect on the output of the result. The bathymetric data was obtained from two sources
data sheet (x,y,z ) which exported from a depth contours map,. and the Admiralty Chart no. 2573, El Burullos to El
Arish, (2011).This data used to determine the depths at each node of the model that shown in fig. 6
1090 Ahmed A. Lebleb et al. / Aquatic Procedia 4 (2015) 1086 – 1093

Fig. 6. Bathymetry

4.2. Main control data.

The simulation is planned to run all over a year over a full spring-neap tidal cycle (approx. 14 days) in order to
ensure that periods with and without strong currents are accounted for in the flushing calculations.The time step is
taken 20 minutes that it was found to be stable .. The area of interest is filled with a hypothetical, conservative
pollutant with a concentration of 100%.The tidal water level variation at the inlets was based on hourly tidal levels
and wind data over a full year that shown in fig. 3 and fig . 2

4.3. Boundary conditions.

The boundary conditions considered the second most important input comes after the bathymetric that has a deep
effect on the output of the model. The water level variation over the full year at the entrance assumed to be the same
at the boundary line as shown in fig. 7

Fig. 7. Boundary line location

 Ahmed A. Lebleb et al. / Aquatic Procedia 4 (2015) 1086 – 1093 1091

5. Model Results and Discussions

These results are used to calculate the "residence time" for the water body, which is the quantity typically used to
express the flushing. The residence time (T50) is equal to the time required to replace 50% of the water in the water
body with new water entering through the boundaries of the area of interest T50 is calculated as J. Juhland(2008):

T50 t2  t1  ln1  0.5 (4)

§c ·
ln¨¨ 2 ¸¸
© c1 ¹
where T50 is the half-life period, t2 and t1 the end and start time and c2 and c1 the concentration of the tracer at
time t2 andt1, respectively rev. A general rule is that T50 should be less than 7 days, but values up to 15 days can
be accepted if there are no polluted discharges to the water body which has been assumed to be the case for The
island defind .
the next section showed the rusults for the most impotant there cases accordind to tide and wind effects.

5.1. CASE -1 The Average tide Rate without Wind Effect.

The model simulation period of this case is from 29 June1999 to 30July1990 without wind effect as shown in
fig. 8.With Time Interval 20 Minute. First result Shown the tracer concentration at start time , the second one After
1.125 Day, and the third After 3 days and shown that the water totally renewed

Fig. 8. Output of Case 1- The Average Tide Rate Without Wind Effect

5.2. . CASE -2 The Minimum tide Rate Without Wind Effect

This case considered the worst case but not the realistic one because wind effect not included . The model
simulation period of this case is From 3September1999 to 10Junuary1999 . With Time Interval 20 Minute. The
result shown in fig. 9 divided into four steps. First result Shown the tracer concentration at start time , The second
one After 10 Day, The third After11.5 days and shown the starting time of changing in tide value, and the fourth
After13 days and shown that the water totally renewed .
1092 Ahmed A. Lebleb et al. / Aquatic Procedia 4 (2015) 1086 – 1093

Fig. 9. Output of Case 2- The Minimum Tide Rate Wind Effect

For this case the tidal variations were very small starting time to 14September at, so the tracer concentration still
close to it's initial concentration from start to the time of larger tidal varuation that shown in second result. 13 Days
to renewed the water isn't a very good flushing result that can be acceptable after check the water quality for value
of Oxygen , BOD, and Salinity By MIKE 21 EL (ECO LAP) but not forget that the wind effect not included in this
model,so we should first add the wind effect to this case and if the result of flushing still close to this result we
should check by ecolap modeling .

5.3. CASE -3 The Minimum tide Rate With Wind Effect.

This case shown in fig.10 considered the design realistic case as it is contained the minimum exist parameter
that effected on circulation of water with the wind effect . The model simulation period of this case as the previous
case 2 From 3September1999 10Junuary1999 . With Time Interval 20 Minute. The first result shown the tracer
concentration at start time , The second one after 3. Day, the third after 5 days and shown that the water totally
renewed .

Fig. 10. Output of Case 2- The Minimum Tide Rate Witht Wind Effect
 Ahmed A. Lebleb et al. / Aquatic Procedia 4 (2015) 1086 – 1093 1093

6. Comparing Between The Flushing Result At Different Point in Studying Area

By Inserting Four point at different Area, that shown in Fig.11 and measured the flushing time for water bodies
at the four area for all three cases and compared between them that shown at Fig.11.the comparing between the
different points for the three cases gives an overall view for the effect of each case conditions.

Fig. 11. Comparing Between The Flushing Result At Different Points

7. Conclusion

The study shown that the preliminary layout for the project is adequate for good water circulation .
Also the paper approved that the wind has a great effect on the Renewing time for water body . The wind effect
may reach more than 50% as it increase with the water depths decrease so, we can manage the residence time by
reshaping the bathymetry of the studying area if we have a good wind condition .

Acknowledgment

The authors thank A.Elghandor for his valuable advices during work on paper . Also the authors thank
all project team M. Elnabe, A.Dador, M.Elshawarby, A.Saad for their efforts and supports.

References

Admiralty Chart 2573, El Burullos to El Arish, 2011.

CEM “Coastal Engineering Manual ,Part II, Coastal Hydrodynamics”,Aug,2008
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